something terrible was penetrating his soul--admiration for a convict. Respect for a galley-slave--is that a possible thing?
He shuddered at it, yet could not escape from it.
In vain did he struggle, he was reduced to confess, in his inmost heart, the sublimity of that wretch.
This was odious.
A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed.
Things could not go on in this manner.
Certainly, and we insist upon this point, he had not yielded without resistance to that monster, to that infamous angel, to that hideous hero, who enraged almost as much as he amazed him. Twenty times, as he sat in that carriage face to face with Jean Valjean, the legal tiger had roared within him.
A score of times he had been tempted to fling himself upon Jean Valjean, to seize him and devour him, that is to say, to arrest him.
What more simple, in fact?
To cry out at the first post that they passed:--"Here is a fugitive from justice, who has broken his ban!" to summon the gendarmes and say to them: